Knitting in the peace and quiet

The other night, after a long day at work, I sat in the big leather chair and worked on my knitting.

No TV.

No iPod.

No radio.

 

It was wonderful.

 

We don’t get enough peace and quiet, I think. It’s good for the soul.

What is work?

Some interesting thoughts on the nature of work, here, from Green Bean.

Preaparing for Change

As spring slowly starts to seem possible once again, we prepare for the change of seasons.

The heavy sweaters and wool socks won't go into storage for a long time yet, but the short sleeved t-shirts get a run through the wash as they become viable wardrobe options once more, and last year's sandals are checked to see if they will hold up through another season. The calendar is pulled down from the wall and the dates for planting are checked and double checked against a countdown to the last frost date. Seedlings are put into peat moss to get a jump on the growing season, and when their roots poke through the newspaper pots, they are transplanted into tomato tins so they have more room to grow. Drawing after drawing of the garden layout is made and discarded, then retrieved for further examination and thought. Pasture layout and gate placement diagrams go through the same process, with frequent trips outside to the snow covered yard to imagine what it would look like with a fence through here, or a gate over there.

A lot of the preparations for the change of seasons are thought experiments: What would the garden be like if I put the herbs in containers instead of a raised bed? Where could we put in an orchard? If we had two cow/calf pairs that needed to get from the back pasture to a shelter at night, and we need an easy path to the barn for the cow who is in milk, where would the fences and gates have to go? How could we design a chicken coop that let the birds into the garden in the winter and kept them out in the summer?

These things are a lot easier to experiment with in thought than in reality: you don't want to build a fence and hang a gate and then discover that you put the gate where the snow drifts two feet deep in the winter so you can't open it. You don't want to plant fruit trees near the house and then realize that you've just invited the local bees and hornets to hang out by your back door.

You also want to build in some flexibility, because even (or perhaps especially) carefully laid plans are still subject to change. We only have one cow/calf pair at the moment, but what if we decided that we needed two? The chickens currently free range all the time, but what if we wanted to confine some of them for part of the year, or if we needed to isolate some of the birds for breeding or egg laying? Thought experiments let you wander down possible paths of the future, without committing to anything in particular. Yet.

Of course, the trick to a successful thought experiment is to really think. You have to consider not only what you want to accomplish, how you might go about it, and the various alternate pathways that you might seek out in the future, you also have to imagine the things that might go wrong, the full and varied consequences of the changes you are planning to make, and the ways that the situation might evolve over time.

This kind of thing can be really enjoyable, if you let it be. After all, there's no pressure to get it right the first time: if you come up with a better design in a week, you can draw that plan out too and then let both ideas sit for awhile until you truly have to choose one or the other. Maybe in the meantime you'll stumble across a website with ideas you hadn't thought of yet, or a book with a a plan that will work in your situation with just a little tweak. In the end you may have several drafts that are variations on a theme: sometimes, it's the theme that's common to all of the ideas you've had that is the real clue as to how to proceed.

Thought experiments let you safely explore scary ideas with minimal risk. You can ponder things you're really not ready to try yet (or things that you hope you will never have to try) safe in the privacy of your own mind. Drawing pictures won't cost you anything, and researching is cheap or free. Maybe you'll never need or want to implement what you've thought about, in which case you haven't really lost anything. Then again, maybe the situation you were hoping to avoid will appear with little or no warning. If it does, you'll be able to reach into your memory and retrieve the thoughts you had about something a lot like this, and voila, you have a ready-made plan at your disposal right when you need it.

I often say I don't believe in planning, I believe in being prepared. Real life seems to fiercly resist all efforts at planning ... well, my life does, anyway. If I sat down and carefully plotted out exactly where I'd put each thing in the garden, I can guarantee that for a number of good reasons, a lot of things wouldn't get planted according to the diagram. There'd be more tomato plants than I expected, or fewer cucumbers, or the zucchini would be taking over the place before I even got going ... it would never be like it was on paper. So why do I bother with the paper? Why do the thought experiments at all? Why not just wing it?

I prepare because if I have five or six (or seven or eight) different options, all of which I've drawn out and considered and contemplated and weighed, then when I'm out there in the dirt with my seedlings and trowel, I have a collection of ideas that can be mixed and matched when I finally have all the information I need to make the final choices. I also know that the ideas that stuck around are the ones that elimiated the big mistakes I made when I first did my drawings: I'll remember that there was a reason all the later plans left the space beside the gate clear ... it's so that the finished compost can be easily dumped into the garden without crushing any plants. All the time spent at the kitchen table in the depths of winter pays off when I can stand in the spring garden and quickly choose from the ideas I came up with back when I had time to think at leisure.

So, like every other year, we have a set of thought experiments bubbling along to work through the questions that arrive with the onset of spring. This year, though, there's another set of thought experiments on the go at the same time: there are big changes that look ever more likely to arise in the larger world, changes that could rather substantially shift the base assumptions about the way we go through our days. Just because we can't be sure what is going to happen, or just because we hope that nothing really big will shift ... well, that doesn't mean we can't at least think about ways we might deal with these kinds of things if they did, by some chance, happen in our corner of the world.

So, since thought experiments are safe and free, we can allow ourselves to edge our way little by little towards the ideas of change, exploring the possibilities and thinking about how we might cope if something really did shift in a big way. And then, if change does happen to come our way, we can choose from the good ideas we came up with when we had time to think at leisure.

Interesting article

The economic news these days can be a lot to absorb, and much of it is hard to follow. Once you do get the gist of it, it's hard to know what to do besides shrug and hope for the best.

I found an interesting article today that discusses the ideas of wealth and investment in light of the current economic situation, and actually has some practical advice:

Money ... is not wealth. It's a social mechanism for distributing wealth. It means nothing unless there's real wealth – actual, nonfinancial goods and services – to back it up. In a healthy market economy, there's a rough balance between the amount of money in circulation and the amount of real wealth produced annually, and so the confusion between money and wealth can slip by unnoticed. When money and wealth get out of sync with one another, problems sprout...

... put your money into something that will actually be useful: training in practical skills that will make you employable in a deindustrializing economy, for example, or extra insulation so you can keep your home livable with less energy. At this point in history, the belief that it's possible to have your money make your living for you is basically a delusion; it's likely to be a fairly persistent one, but those who can shake themselves free of it and adjust to life in a radically different economic reality are likely to do better than those who keep on chasing the prospects of an age that is ending around us.

from The Archdruid Report

Sure, dollars in the bank are great. But what happens when the 'things' that those dollars are supposed to represent change in value? When food or fuel becomes more scarce, and therefore more expensive? Will you feel 'wealthy' when the dollars don't mean what they once did?

One of the comments on the Archrduid's blog expressed that particular idea very clearly:

I was, after all, a billionaire at age 10, and at the same time I had to wait in long lines for bread, (cooking) oil, etc.; hyperinflation combined with shortages will make that sort of thing happen. (Yugoslavia, early nineties.)

Ah, yes, Yugoslavia. And Russia before that. I fervently hope that we do not see such times as those anywhere again, and yet I find that hope alone is not enough to help me sleep easy at night. I can't change the way the big picture is going to play out, so my actions have to be close to home. For our family, action means working hard to pay off debts while the dollars still have their accustomed meaning, building up our infrastructure with possible changes in fuel or electrical availability in mind, and growing our skills in food production and preservation while we still have Safeway for backup in case we mess up.

Not everyone lives on a little farm like we do, so what you do to help ensure security for your family may look different. For inspiration, think about how things were for our grandparents and great grandparents: around here, just about everyone had a little garden, canned food in the fall, and shopped locally from people they knew who had bigger gardens, or dairy cows, or chickens. Nothing stops us from doing those things again, and shopping at your neighbour's place or local farmer's market means that you're encouraging local growers to keep doing what they are doing. That in turn means that if some day, for some reason, the trucks can't make it to your supermarket, well, you already have a source for eggs and zucchini.

(Okay, you're right, the problem is not going to be where to find zucchini, it's going to be figuring out where to get rid of all the extras you grew! Hint: grated zucchini dehydrates really well.)

Lessons from illness

This infection has hit much harder than you'd expect from a few bacteria camped out in the tiny space inside my ear. It's been a full week now, and although I am able to be out of bed for a normal day, I am still unable to do any physically demanding work ... even sitting at the loom to weave would be enough to exhaust me. It has been a long, slow week.

The day after our late night run to the emergency room, I slept. The whole day. The Reluctant Farmer had a class to attend, and was worried that I probably shouldn't be home without another adult to watch over me, so my mom came and spent the day here. While I lay in bed sleeping, my mother and my son cleaned the house, scrubbing under the sink, washing laundry, sweeping floors, chasing dust bunnies. As we are close to the time of year when spring cleaning is scheduled, this is not really the ideal time to have anyone else puttering around in the really disgusting nooks and crannies of my house ... it's even more embarassing than usual. The truth is things are pretty dirty around here most of the time, and it's hard to keep up. A small illness or a series of other obligations can put house cleaning seriously behind.

My mother is an excellent house keeper. She is also a very generous person, and sees cleaning my house while I sleep off a shot of Demerol to be a gift she can give me, not an imposition. Yet, for me, accepting gifts of service from others is surprisingly difficult.

The Reluctant Farmer and The Boy have spent a whole week bringing me drinks, doing my chores, making sure I take my medicine on time, letting me sleep. My coworkers have filled in for me, picking up loose ends and handling things I would normally take care of ... and one of them even made a delivery run out to the house to bring me some things that I'd left in the office and had need of.

All this kindness is difficult to accept, somehow, even though I know that nobody who has helped me feels imposed upon, or is angry with me for needing their assistance. Yet somehow I can't help but feel like it is somehow wrong to require help, wrong to ask anything of others, wrong to be in need ... even though it is patently obvious that I cannot do these things for myself right now.

I seem to have this delusional belief that if I were just strong enough, or dedicated enough, or smart enough, then I would never need help from other people. Now, this is plainly ridiculous. I don't hold anyone else to that standard: when I see someone who needs a hand, I offer it, without ever thinking of them as weak or unmotivated or stupid. I mean, we all need help sometimes.

So why do I resist so strongly when it is me who needs the help? I don't think anyone else should have to do things all on their own. Why should I expect it of myself?

Because I don't like having to need anyone else. It is scary. What if I need them and they aren't there? What if they get mad at me for needing so much and then they go away and I'm left all alone? Silly fears, I suppose, but they are there. So I want to pretend that I don't need anyone, that I can do this all by myself. But it always turns out that I can't do this all by myself ... and then I get frustrated and berate myself for being too weak, too lazy, or too stupid to get by on my own.

But you see, that's all untrue. I am strong - well, I'm not physically very strong, but my body does function reasonably well and I can do most ordinary tasks. Even when I'm at my best I can't do heavy lifting, and I can't do long hours of physical work either ... but why should I think that I could? I have a small body and it's not well trained. I have weak joints that need to be protected. If I push my body beyond it's limits, all I will end up doing is injuring myself and then I'll need even more help. That would be stupid. Better to share the workload with others whose bodies are better suited to the hard labour, or to take it slowly and do only what my little body can safely do in a day, and no more.

And I am dedicated - I pursue the things I believe are right and the dreams I have for myself and my family with a sometimes frightening level of obsession. I don't need help because I'm too lazy to do things on my own ... I need help because my dreams are even bigger than what one person to realize all on her own.

And, I am smart - I read, research, and generally make well-informed decisions. When I need help to figure something out, it's not because I'm too dumb to do it by myself ... it's because I'm smart enough to ask for more input so that I can make a better choice in the end.

It can be so very hard to be a friend to yourself,though. It's so easy to beat yourself up, to let that little voice in your head start ranting about how you're weak and lazy and stupid. I'd never speak to a friend that way ... in fact, I'd never speak to a stranger that way ... so why would it be okay to talk to myself like that?

It's not.

So ... yeah, I need a lot of help right now. Someone else has to feed the sheep today. Someone else needs to mop the floors this week. Someone else needs to empty the dishwasher this evening.

But this is why we live in families, in communities, and not as solitary, lonely people. There is someone else to do the jobs this week that I cannot do - several someone else's in fact, and they are all willing to help. Some other week, when it's their job that remains undone because they are sick or preoccupied or grieving or busy, well, then it will be my turn to help.

Today, though, it is my turn to be helped, and I need to accept the help with as much grace as I would give it, were it the other way around.

After all, it's really not so hard to say "thank you for helping me, I really needed it".

And to smile when I say it.

Beginnings

The world moves in cycles. The holidays of the year help us to find our place in the larger circle, giving us reference points that focus our attention on things that come around again and again, each time the same, yet each time different than the last. It is a spiral moving forward, yet still turning around and around, back to the same point it was last year at this time ... but futher forward in the larger scheme of things. Christmas and New Years come to us in the midst of the dark winter, every year giving us a chance to celebrate the return of the Light and to awaken hope for a better year ahead.

We are in the middle of winter, now, a time of cold and chill, a time when the weak succumb to a snow-blanketed eternal slumber. This particular winter has seen quite a few things fall into that deep frozen sleep: our collective belief in eternal economic growth; our confidence that it's safe to accumulate debt because well, we'll just pay it off later; our certainty that all we need is a 'good job' and we'll be set for life; and our certainty that the future will look much like the recent past, only brighter ... all of these things are fading into the darkness. These are big losses, big changes in our world, and the chill of their passing has hit many of us already ... the frostbitten breeze that blows in their wake is bound to send shivers down many more spines before it settles into quiet at last.

But the world keeps turning, and with the death and darkness of winter there is also the festival of the return of the Light, and the festival of hope for a new and better year ahead. There is a new beginning in every ending, and the changes we face now are no exception.

The old vision of economic growth is dying, and the markets are still reeling from the fallout. This is all bound to take some time to unravel, but in the end, perhaps we will begin once again to define growth as activites that truly create value, rather than just the shuffling of numbers from one column to another. We all know the creation of value when we see it: a farmer coaxing seeds into vegetables for the table, a carpenter building a comfortable bench where you can sit to change your shoes, a barber trimming your hair and making you look presentable again. That's value. When more of it happens, that's growth. It would be good for us to 'officially' define things that way.

For years now debt was okay, because we were certain we'd have no trouble paying it off later. If we wanted to go on a big holiday, we'd access the equity in the house. That's why it's there, right? But as the US housing market tumbles into chaos and global credit markets unwind, we see that later sometimes comes much sooner than we think. As Canadians, we may be able to learn from our southern neighbour's mistakes in time to avoid the worst of the crisis here ... but we, too, are part of the global economy and we will not be exempt. Besides, we too are in the habit of being in debt. Thankfully, the idea that 'debt is no big deal' is dying this winter, as we see the consequences of that belief playing out so painfully across the world. This is reason for hope, though: if we resolve to live within our means, and make every effort to get out of the mess we've created as quickly and safely as we can, we can move into the future with confidence, knowing there is no sword of debt over our heads, waiting to fall. This might just be the wakeup call we need to get our financial houses in order.

We have long believed that a 'good job' is the basis for a secure future... you didn't really need to worry about contingency planning, because a good job would see you through. Now, with the auto industry in crisis, Ontario alone is losing thousands of jobs, despite the 'stimulus package' ... and those were 'good jobs'. Working for GM was a guarantee of a lifetime of employment and a good pension but that is disappearing, and taking manufacturing and service industries along with it. Oil prices are down, and the boom in the Alberta oil sands is slowing. Projects are being delayed or cancelled. Where is the hope in this dark time? This is harder to see. Many families will suffer greatly from these changes, and few will have had contigency plans in place. However, for those who accept right now that there is no such thing as a secure job and make plans for coping with job loss before it happens, then there is a cushion created at the bottom of the fall, and it won't hurt so much. We can all reach out to help one another, realizing that we are not immune, and next week, it could be us in need of help. We can share what we have - food and a spare room for a friend unable to pay the rent, knowledge of how to cook cheap but healthy meals from scratch for someone getting by on EI, a spare can of tomatoes dropped in the Food Bank bin at Safeway. There is hope, even in this.

The death of our belief that the future will look much like the recent past, only brighter, is perhaps the most difficult loss of all. We who are parents dream of a future for our children that is even better than our own past. In Canada at least, that past has been free of large scale catastrophes like famine or war or economic disaster. Store shelves have always been stocked, anything we want is a short drive or a quick phone call away. However, it is plain to see that our children will inherit a world much different than the one we grew up in, and vastly different from the one we would have hoped to bequeath to them. Right now, we can't even predict what things will look like in the next few months. Even planning your fuel budget is a gamble: will gasoline cost 78 cents a litre next month, or $1.65? What will 'economic recovery' actually look like? I don't think anyone really knows.

Despite all the uncertainty about the future, though, this is where hope shines brightest. Our children have open minds, and they can learn new ways of living. They can, indeed, teach us old-fashioned grownups new ways of seeing the world in all of it's beauty and wonder. Have you ever watched a little child play with a cardboard box and wondered why you spent all that money on the toy when all they really wanted was the box? Maybe now we will come to realize that simple pleasures are, indeed, the best. We can take this chance to see the world through the eyes of our children.

To a child, it is very cool to eat carrots you grew in your back yard all by yourself.

Why not try it?

To a child who has known nothing different, taking your own shopping bags to the store is normal, and getting plastic bags is weird.

Why not get into the habit of keeping cloth bags in your car now?

To a child, it is easy to care about the polar bears losing their ice, and to care enough to want to do something about it.

Why don't you drive a little less, turn the heat down a notch,
and reduce your contribution to global warming?

We grownups are tempted to say, "Oh, nothing I can do will make a difference." But you see, it can. It does. Your one choice may not make enough difference to tip the scales back over, that's true. But the scales are affected by every choice that is made, and every wise choice is a declaration of hope in a dark winter.

Light the candles. They are hope in the darkness.

Make yours shine as brightly as it can. It matters.

A beautiful reflection on hope in changing times

A father in Ireland writes of his dreams and hopes for his four year old daughter, as the world changes into something we cannot clearly see:

She loves animals as much as any child, and we talk in detail about where they live, what makes them mammals or birds or bugs, what they eat and what they do for us and each other. For now, it is just a game, but over time, perhaps, she will make connections.

She knows, in recited pieces of theory at least, how to cook, how to make yogurt and sourdough starter, how to compost. In time, I want her to learn how to ride and bridle, speak different languages, hunt, be sceptical, think logically and organize people. I can’t completely predict what she will face, nor can I plan her life, but I can show her a beginning.

ftp://restoringmayberry.blogspot.com/2008/12/moment-of-darkness.html

found via Sharon Astyk, via Crunchy Con.

And, while you're at it, read Sharon's lovely reflections on Chanukah:

6. Fifth Candle

When the candles burn down and flicker
The light pools
In intersecting circles with the light
From my neighbor’s tree.

If anti-assimilationism is the central message of the history of Chanukah, we should remember that we are not the only people who celebrate the restoration of the light. If there is a single work to be done in the next decade, it is to build community in every sense of the word. We need not assimilate, in fact, we should not, because we cannot afford to lose any more diversity. But we cannot close the doors on one another. It is always easier to build community with people who are like you, with the same values and the same ideas, maybe people from the same family, or with the same experiences, and there is nothing wrong with that. But we have lived the last decades as though the people we cannot see, the people downstream from us, out of sight or in other nations, do not matter. So at the same time that we strengthen the ties with those who are like us, we absolutely must strive to create a new recognition of the other, a new way of connecting, of at a minimum, doing no harm, and just possibly, joining some of our pools of light.

http://sharonastyk.com/2008/12/24/holiday-spirits/

Words of Wisdom in my Inbox

My aunt sent me one of those 'lists of things to think about' today ... and it was exactly what I needed!

Here are my favourites, just in case something on this list happens to be exactly what you need today, too!

• Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Talk to God about what is going on in your life. Buy a lock if you have to.
• Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
• Don't waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts or things you can not control. Instead, invest your energy in the positive present moment.
• Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
• Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
• Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does!
• Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
• Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
• Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In five years, will this matter?'
• Forgive everyone for everything.
• What other people think of you is none of your business.
• However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
• When you are feeling down, start listing your many blessings. You'll be smiling before you know it.

Life is good! We are blessed!

Let's not forget those important details in the rush and bustle of every day. :)

Blessings to you!